Eveline Looking Through a Window
Yessica Imm
Professor Samuel D. Huntington
English 1302-5011
12 June 2012
Looking Through a Window Does happiness relate to freedom? Does everything happen for a reason? "Eveline", written by James Joyce, is a really good example of how life presents itself as an adventure with obstacles and sacrifices we are supposed to be willing to go through. Most of the times, our process of decision making goes against what we really want and what really makes us happy, but that is also part of life which is basically like an experiment, the more experiments we make, the more we discover and the better we feel about ourselves. James Joyce wrote this short story back in 1914. This was a time where women were considered less that the worth of men, women were considered housekeepers, the ones staying at home, cooking and cleaning and in charge of the kids. Joyce writes, "She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly" (Joyce 618). Another proof of this matter is the relationship Eveline had with her father. Joyce expresses that Eveline 's dad used to go for her two brothers, and not her because she was a girl; but unfortunately, after her mother 's death, he became violent and disrespectful towards her because of the same reason: she was a girl (617). This situation causes me to put myself in her shoes, making me feel angry but at the same time unable or incapable of doing something about it because of the respect that I have towards adults, especially my own father. Due to her situation and the fact that she made a promise to her mother to keep the family together, she has a hard time making decisions. She demonstrates she is not selfish, but at the same time a little weak towards adventuring and making experiments with her life. It is also visible that she was educated with morals and respect, demonstrated with the heavy weight that her promise
Professor Samuel D. Huntington
English 1302-5011
12 June 2012
Looking Through a Window Does happiness relate to freedom? Does everything happen for a reason? "Eveline", written by James Joyce, is a really good example of how life presents itself as an adventure with obstacles and sacrifices we are supposed to be willing to go through. Most of the times, our process of decision making goes against what we really want and what really makes us happy, but that is also part of life which is basically like an experiment, the more experiments we make, the more we discover and the better we feel about ourselves. James Joyce wrote this short story back in 1914. This was a time where women were considered less that the worth of men, women were considered housekeepers, the ones staying at home, cooking and cleaning and in charge of the kids. Joyce writes, "She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly" (Joyce 618). Another proof of this matter is the relationship Eveline had with her father. Joyce expresses that Eveline 's dad used to go for her two brothers, and not her because she was a girl; but unfortunately, after her mother 's death, he became violent and disrespectful towards her because of the same reason: she was a girl (617). This situation causes me to put myself in her shoes, making me feel angry but at the same time unable or incapable of doing something about it because of the respect that I have towards adults, especially my own father. Due to her situation and the fact that she made a promise to her mother to keep the family together, she has a hard time making decisions. She demonstrates she is not selfish, but at the same time a little weak towards adventuring and making experiments with her life. It is also visible that she was educated with morals and respect, demonstrated with the heavy weight that her promise
Cited: Joyce, James. "Eveline." Portable Legacies: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Nonfiction. Ed. Jan Zlotnik Schmidt and Lynne Crockett. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. 616-620. Print.